At the Embedded Vision Alliance Summit 2015 in Santa Clara, CogniVue Corporation said its new APEX Processing Core, Opus, is at the center of an intense battle for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) market share as challengers to Mobileye, the current market share leader, line up to capture business for next-generation ADAS systems.

Next-generation ADAS systems will provide a range of critical new autonomous driving functions requiring orders of magnitude more performance than previous offerings. CogniVue said its Opus APEX core offers dramatic advances in performance per power at a critical time in this disruption of the ADAS market. Read more...

Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq:SNPS) announced the availability of its Virtualizer™ Development Kit (VDK) for Freescale’s S32V200 family of microcontrollers (MCUs). The VDK uses the S32V234 virtual prototype as an embedded target for early and more efficient software development, integration and test of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).

The VDK was developed through the Center of Excellence collaboration between Freescale and Synopsys, which leverages joint engineering teams to develop and test virtual prototypes and VDKs optimized for Freescale automotive products. Read more...

All-in-one development system, programmable from Simulink, features a compact design and more than 100 I/O interfaces.

dSPACE has introduced MicroLabBox, a compact control system development platform for laboratory use that offers high computing power and comprehensive functionalities.

MicroLabBox is intended to make creating, optimizing and testing controllers, and implementing data acquisition applications easy and cost-efficient for both industry and academia.

With its powerful combination of a Simulink-programmable real-time processor and the latest high-performance Kintex FPGA (field-programmable gate array), MicroLabBox provides the versatility required for research and development. It is specifically designed with an optimal form factor to not take up any more desk space than a conventional laptop computer. Read more...

Mentor Graphics (NASDAQ: MENT) announced the availability of Automotive Ethernet support in the Volcano™ VSA™ product for network design of both AUTOSAR-based and non-AUTOSAR electronic control units (ECUs).

Increasingly, in areas in which high bandwidth and reliable performance are essential, Ethernet is being used. These include advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), vehicle network backbones, audio video bridging (AVB) systems, and diagnostic communication over Internet Protocol (DoIP).

The Mentor® Volcano VSA tool addresses the network-wide timing analysis challenges where a mixture of CAN, FlexRay, and Ethernet-based network busses co-exist. The AUTOSAR standard supports timing definition for all elements in a mixed-topology network. The Volcano VSA tool addresses the challenge of accounting for the many different timing paths. Read more...

According to the company, it is the first safety operating system in the automotive industry that enables carmakers and suppliers to create AUTOSAR-based multi-core control units conforming to the highest Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL D) according to ISO 26262. Read more...

Wireless charging promises consumers a new level of convenience for maintaining readiness of mission critical and lifestyle enhancing communication tools.

Low battery warnings are never welcome but seem ever present with the increasing reliance on portable electronics in our personal and professional lives.

Combining the automotive grade NFC (Near Field Communication) transceiver of Melexis with Freescale Semiconductor’s wireless charging technology enables a ready to use reference design solution that could free us from the dreaded low battery warning.

While radar will remain a key technology, boosted by the 79 GHz spectrum band expected to become available globally, camera sensors and machine vision technology hold the promise of propelling ADAS into the mainstream because of its lower cost, flexibility, and multi-purpose character. Read more...

Bosch of Germany was the No. 1 supplier in the world last year of automotive microelectromechanical system (MEMS) sensors, a market in which shipments continue to expand strongly but where revenue was being squeezed by marked price erosion, according to a new report from IHS Technology (NYSE: IHS).

With revenue of $740 million, Bosch’s total amounted to more than three times the sales of its nearest competitor, Denso of Japan, which remained in second place, as in 2012. Together the Top 10 accounted for $2.18 billion worth of revenue, as shown in the attached figure, equivalent to 88 percent of the industry total of $2.47 billion. In 2012, the top 10 also had an 88 percent share in light of combined revenue of $2.12 billion, out of an industry aggregate of $2.40 billion. Read more...

Individual process running on one core while structural coverage data is collected

LDRA announced its ability to provide cost-effective verification of multicore systems to safety-critical standards.

The company also said it has improved the ability of its LDRA tool suite to meet the increasing number of highly constrained, minimal-footprint architectures used in today’s safety-critical and security-critical applications.

Multicore Systems

The need for greater processing power with reduced power consumption is driving developers of safety-critical applications toward multicore systems. Verification of such systems for rigorous safety-critical certifications such as DO-178C poses specific challenges. When multiple processes run on different cores, collecting structural coverage data and creating and executing tests efficiently can be hampered by concurrency, reliability, and robustness roadblocks. Read more...